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The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate determinants of social entrepreneurship.

The study uses a large-scale database covering Sweden’s 290 municipalities over the 1990-2014 period. The theoretical analysis is based on the demand and supply theory of entrepreneurship, while the empirical analysis is based on feasible generalized least-squares regression models.

The results indicate that the male proportion of the workforce, education level, the presence of entrepreneurial role models, wealth, unemployment rate, age, and urbanization positively influence the rate of social venture creation in a region.

This is one of few studies that empirically investigate determinants of social entrepreneurship, and the very first in the Swedish context. The study uses a large-scale database and advanced regression methods.

The purpose of this paper is to study the interaction between social and commercial ventures in a region. It achieves this objective through investigating the influence of social ventures’ entry, exit and density on the entry rate of commercial ventures.

Organizational ecology is applied for theoretical analysis and the feasible generalized least square method for empirical analysis.

The study, in overall, finds a diffuse competition between the populations of social and commercial ventures. The results have revealed a negative influence of social ventures’ entry and density on the entry rate of commercial ventures and a positive influence of the social ventures’ exit on commercial ventures’ entry rate in a region.

The study is one of the few in its filed that empirically studies the interaction between social and commercial ventures and the first study, which investigates it in the context of Sweden. The previous two studies, however, have only examined either the influence of social ventures entry or social venture density on the entry rate of commercial ventures. This study, however, examines the influence of both of those factors plus the influence of social venture exit on commercial venture entry. The study is also unique regarding the large-scale database it uses including all the 290 municipalities all over Sweden 1990-2014.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how social and commercial ventures interact with each other. It investigates how the entry, exit and prevalence of commercial ventures in a given region can influence the creation of social ventures.

Market failure theory has been used as a framework for analysing the interaction between social and commercial ventures. The results of the theoretical analysis were further empirically examined using a large-scale database covering all 290 municipalities in Sweden from 1990 to 2014 and applying the panel-corrected standard errors method.

The results of this study, in general, reveal a competition between social and commercial ventures. Its specific results, however, are related to influences that the entry, exit and prevalence of commercial ventures can have on the creation of social ventures. The study’s results reveal that while the entry and prevalence of commercial ventures in a region negatively influence the creation of social ventures, commercial ventures’ exits have a positive influence.

Within social entrepreneurship literature, this is the first study that empirically investigates the influence of commercial ventures’ entry and exit on social venture creation and the second study to investigate the influence of commercial ventures’ prevalence on social venture creation. It is also the first of such studies in the Swedish context. The study is also unique due to the large-scale database it uses.

The purpose of this paper is to study the firm-level financial variables affecting the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The study applies a resource-based view to analyze the firm-level as well as industry-level determinants of SME growth. Empirical evidence has also been provided from a data set of SMEs in Sweden to support the hypotheses. For a robust statistical analysis, three models – ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, random-effects regression and fixed-effects regression – are used to examine the influence of explanatory variables on growth.

The findings of this study show a positive and significant influence of profitability, short-term debt and size on a firm’s growth across all three models. Results regarding the influence of long-term debt on growth, however, are mixed. While the results of a fixed-effect model show the negative and significant influence of long-term debt on growth, the results according to OLS and random effects show long-term debt positively related to growth.

This study has been conducted over a period of four years and in the context of Sweden which may limit the generalizability of its results for longer periods and for different contexts. Moreover, the low explanatory power of the models implies the need to also consider other types of variables, such as managerial or socio-economic variables, to better explain the determinants of SME growth.

Understanding the determinants of growth can be important for policy makers, SME managers and financial institutions. The findings of this study can be used for designing policies which stimulate SME growth. Realizing the financial resources that influence growth can also help SME managers and financial institutions to understand each other’s need for better cooperation.

This paper applies different models for analyzing large and cross-sectoral data regarding SME growth in the context of Sweden.

This study aims to examine the determinants of the growth of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The resource-based view theory is adopted in the analysis of the study.

The descriptive and multivariate regression analysis was used to analyze the data. A stratified sampling technique is adopted with a sample size of 119 managers from SMEs. There are variables delineated from theories (human capital, social capital, strategy and organization), which are associated with the firm’s growth that include; the size of the firm, firm age, manager’s education, training, experience, financing and network relationship.

The results found that the size of the firm, the experience of the manager, training, financing and the network relationship have a significant relationship with the firm’s growth. However, other variables such as the education and firm’s age do not have a significant relationship with the firm’s growth.

This study could be considered as an exposure to the SMEs in Saudi Arabia on the specific factors by the owner–managers who intend to develop their business.